Education

The Section of Infectious Diseases provides education in multiple venues, and for many levels of students. Mentoring occurs in all components of the outpatient Center for Infectious Diseases, on the inpatient general medical service and the infectious diseases consultation service, in the basic and clinical research venues, and during lectures, small classes and seminars for pre‑ and post-doctoral students, and medical and dental students. Our ongoing ID conference series provides educational opportunities for fellows, junior and senior faculty, and outside visitors at all levels of training. These teaching responsibilities, comprising over 1,000 contact hours of teaching for hundreds of students, are shared by all members of the section.

The section holds an NIH T32 training grant to provide education and research opportunities concerning host-pathogen interactions for post-doctoral students, for which Dr. Skolnik is the principal investigator. Current trainees work with Dr. Ingalls and Dr. John Samuelson in the Department of Biochemistry at the BU School of Medicine.

The section is also a venue for training pre-doctoral students. Dr. Wetzler mentors pre-doctoral students in their laboratories, and teach courses in the Department of Microbiology and the BU Goldman School of Dental Medicine.

Teaching and mentoring is also provided for Master degree candidates in the Graduate School of Medical Sciences by Drs. Ingalls and Madico.

Much teaching occurs during the course of clinical care in the outpatient and inpatient venues, and during related clinical conferences. Our clinical faculty provides this teaching. We have many superb teachers in our section, including Dr. Philip Carling, Dr. Tamar Barlam, who created a summer lecture series for ID fellows, meets biweekly with fellows to discuss antibiotic-related issues, and lectures on antibiotic use and pharmacology to BU medical students and residents, and Dr. Carol Sulis, who mentors medical students in physical diagnosis and clinical problem solving and is advisor to 19 students, among many other teaching activities.

Our VABHS faculty is heavily involved in teaching activities. Dr. David Thornton is Associate Program Director for the BU Internal Medicine Residency Program in charge of VA rotations. He also teaches and precepts BU medical students rotating through the VA for their third year clerkships, and precepts BU ID fellows rotating through the VA on consult service and in the HIV clinic. Dr. Serrao teaches during inpatient and outpatient care in the HIV clinic, and also directs the introduction to clinical medicine course at the VABHS.

Dr. Sagar continues to precept medical students and fellows doing rotations at Cape Cod Hospital.